The Sisyphean Nature Of Bible Studies

[Blood]

Some of you may recall this story from February:

 

Do Camel Bones Discredit the Bible? 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/world/meast/do-camel-bones-discredit-the-bible/

 

This was presented as a shocking mini-controversy. 

 

Last night I came across this:

 

"Most scholars ... regard the mention of camels (in Genesis) as an anachronism. There is no evidence for any widespread domestication of camels ... in the second millennium. Only with the the first millennium was the camel fully domesticated as a riding and burden-carrying animal, and it was not until the eighth and seventh centuries that it became commonplace as a beast of burden within the region of arable land as well as the desert." - John Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (Yale, 1975), pg. 17. 

 

Note that this was written 39 years ago. 

 

How does the Bible perpetuate itself generation after generation? Through the willful ignorance of its practitioners. They read things that potentially challenge the credibility of the Bible, and instead of questioning the Bible, they ignore it, attack the messenger, or use it as a challenge to create new apologetic scenarios. A generation passes, the same problem comes up again, and the cycle simply repeats itself. We keep rolling the rock up the hill, but it never makes it to the other side of the hill. 

 

[Guest]

This is why they want to get into the minds of everyone's children.  The younger this meme is introduced, the harder it is to irradiate it.

[Vigile]

Because there isn't an xian alive who believes based on evidence.  It's all about emotion and indoctrination.  Evidence against can only cause cognitive dissonance unless and until the believer is willing to be intellectually honest. 

[Guest ninurta]

It's not the only point of evidence that genesis postdates the fall of Israel though. Ur Chasdim is worse, as like the camels, Ur of the Chaldees didn't exist until really late. Like the same time period as the domestication of camels. As far as the existence of the hittites, their empire dates to after the supposed time of Abraham.

 

Also, in "Joshua's time" and judges, the israelites were supposedly overthrowing independant Canaanite states. Little did the writers remember, these were either nonexistent cities yet, or territories of the Egyptian empire.

[Blood]

Stories about history are not the same thing as history. 

 

i don't expect the average Bible thumper to understand the difference, but what is really shocking and pathetic is how many so-called scholars don't understand the difference. 

[srd44]

Blood,

 

This is indeed a pervasive, and for many of us, a pathetically disheartening problem that reocurrs and is only the result of improper education, and conversely a culture that prides itself on perpetuating ignorance, especially when in comes to these 70+ anceint texts written 2-3,000 years ago. It's one thing to have biblical scholars (PhD--NB: not theologians or apologists) debate credible issues concerning the dating of these ancient documents, but it's completely unacceptable to live in a culture that lends authority on the topic to the loudest bidder!

 

Having studied the Bible, its languages, the various cultures that produced its 70 some texts over a period of a thousand years in different historical circumstances and under divergent and often competing religious and political convictions for approximately three decades now, and labored numerous years to obtain a Doctorate in biblical studies, I am no longer the expert. The unschooled now speak as experts; the sensationalists, the hypocrites, the apologists, and media pundits and those subjectively invested are the spokespersons now. We live in a sickened and diseased culture. We speak "education" but do very little to promote it or even know what it is!

 

In a book I'm currently working on for the lay public---but finding it hard to find a publisher because although a trained biblical scholar who has an earnest goal to educate the public about the nature of these ancient texts, I do not have a loud enough social platform!---I've written this about anachronisms in an attempt to explain them to the public. I realize this doesn't need to be explained for this readership here, but I offer it up for comments anyhow.

 

    When a story set in the archaic past betrays its date of composition by referring to peoples, places, borders, and events that belong to a much later time period, centuries later, we call these anachronisms, and they help us identify the date of composition of these stories. For example, say I wrote a story that was set in France in the 1920s and then introduced characters who were using iphones. You might chuckle, but this is an anachronism. It tells us that the author who wrote this story lived at a period in time when people used iphones, and he retrojected that reality back into the past. Another type of anachronism that we will run across has to do with geography. Lacking proper knowledge of the past, an ancient storyteller who told stories about the archaic past would often retroject into that past the geopolitical borders and countries of his own time period, thinking that that was the way it had always been. So for example, if I wrote a story set in the American frontier of the 1700s and talked about characters passing over the border of Mississippi or Nebraska, or visiting cities such as St. Louis when no such borders, states, or cities existed, these would be anachronisms.
    There are numerous anachronisms of this sort throughout the Bible, and they have enabled scholars to date many of the Bible’s earlier compositions. Common anachronisms often mentioned in the stories in the book of Genesis are references to Philistines, camels, and border disputes and towns that existed in the author’s own time period, and not the time period implied by the narrative setting. The mention of Abraham’s border dispute with the Philistine king Abimelek (Gen 21:22-33), for example, is an anachronism. We now know through a variety of archaeological and literary remains that the Philistines did not enter the land of Canaan until the 12th century bce and could not have historically been present in any narrative set in the 18th century bce. Rather the author has retrojected his own geopolitical reality into the archaic past. In fact, this particular story of a border treaty with the Philistines most likely represents the historical circumstances of the 10th and 9th centuries bce when Israel often found itself fighting for border control with its coastal neighbor. In this particular case, the treaty Abraham establishes with king Abimelek which explicitly marks Beersheba as belonging to Abraham and his seed serves to legitimate Israelite possession of Beersheba during the early monarchy. So the story served a political function in the time period that it was created. In the ancient world, the most popular way of legitimating the possession and borders of your land was by means of a story set in the archaic past where a founding father figure had laid claims to the land, often by digging wells and establishing cultic sanctuaries to its god.
 

And this too from the same chapter:

 

    The book of Genesis tells us that Abraham’s sojourns span from the northern hill country of Bethel to Beersheba in the southern Negeb. That is to say, all the stories told about Abraham take place within the borders of the southern kingdom of Judah and along its northern and southern fringes. Abraham is a hero of the south. He wanders through, resides in, and establishes cultic sanctuaries to Yahweh throughout the land of Judah, especially along its northern and southern borders. These stories, in other words, display a familiarity with the land and borders of Judah as they were defined in the monarchal period (the 9th-7th centuries bce) and they could not have been written down earlier than this. In fact the purpose of many of these stories was to legitimate the borders of the kingdom of Judah during the monarchal period by presenting an ancestral hero, Abraham, making claims to this land by digging wells and establishing shrines to Yahweh. Moreover, many of these stories display knowledge of other peoples, cities, and territorial boundaries of the Palestinian landscape during the monarchal period as well. In other words, if these traditions are older than the monarchal period, which they may indeed be, they nevertheless reflect the geopolitical realities and concerns of an author or scribal guild living sometime during the 8th-7th centuries bce who modified these traditions and projected his own geopolitical world onto them. Thus these stories served to explain present conditions and realities, such as Israel’s relationship to other peoples and its borders, by accounting for them in the deeds of its ancestors.
 

If anyone here knows of a literary agent or publisher interested in educating the public, please let me know. Honestly I've had 1 literary agent tell me---of course they never actually read the material I send them---"I'm only 5% interested in the content, and 95% interested in your social platform." Really? That's the best the human species can do with their intellect and spirt? Value has now been reduced to media-driven drivel, and if you ain't spouting it, no one wants to publish it. For shame.

[DarwinAdmirer]

There are numerous anachronisms of this sort throughout the Bible

 

As a fairly new ex-christian, I am shocked by the things I learn each day. Yesterday the fact that the jesus-story is nothing new, today this...

When I hear these clear evidences against christianity, I really feel indoctrinated. Aren't christians supposedly looking for the truth? But when you're not presented with all the evidence... 

Is it weird that I seriously did not know any of this? 

[Blood]

No, your experience is the norm. 

 

I don't view them as "evidence against Christianity." It is evidence against Biblical literalism, though the literalists would never agree. Then they teach their students and acolytes the same attitude, and the cycle just repeats itself for another generation. 

[xtify]

Like Marty, I think that childhood indoctrination plays a major role in the generational continuance of biblical literalism.  I would add that the suppression of womens' education and limiting womens' experiences to the home is a major contributor, if not intentional strategy.  When women lack the necessary critical thinking skills and/or lack exposure to other interpretations, they pass on their indoctrination to their children, who accept this information from their trusted mothers.  I think this is the reason why monotheist fundamentalists are against the equality of women in society.

[srd44]

I would add to these, that the core problem from my perspective is that while on the one hand you have a majority of the population "believing" in these texts, literalism or not, on the other hand this majority or our culture in general knows nothing about ancient literature, who wrote ancient texts and why, what were the literary and rhetorical conventions used, were ancient scribes writing history, etc? How can one spout off meaning about these ancient texts, yet know nothing about the ancient world, authors, elite guilds, etc that produced them or ancient literature in general. 

 

Oh, yes, I forgot, the holy spirit has provided them with the proper hemerneutical tools. But yet this too is a rhetorical topos of that very same ancient tradition.

[thereisnoperfect]

See who Bart Ehrman has used as a publisher or agent and start there. His purpose is pretty clearly to educate.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

 

If anyone here knows of a literary agent or publisher interested in educating the public, please let me know. Honestly I've had 1 literary agent tell me---of course they never actually read the material I send them---"I'm only 5% interested in the content, and 95% interested in your social platform." Really? That's the best the human species can do with their intellect and spirt? Value has now been reduced to media-driven drivel, and if you ain't spouting it, no one wants to publish it. For shame.

 

You might look into self-publishing. It seems to be a trend for new authors who don't have something instantly marketable (will draw in significant cash for the publisher). You can publish through Amazon either as digital or as "POD" (Print on demand).

[Roz]

Christians don't tend to trust scholars like Bart Erhman or srd44 because they're cowered by preachers/deacons/elders/pillars of the church. 

We all know the words:

• "Those people are relying NOT on the word of god but their own knowledge"
• "This is a prophecy come true!  The bible says even the very elect will fall!"
• "Trust in god's wisdom, not man's."
• "They built their great wisdom like houses on the sand, not on the rock of ages!"
• (From an SDA pastor) "We can go back and forth on the bible's contradictions, but unless you read the bible with "the spirit of prophecy" all the reason in the world can't help you out"

As soon as they get the courage to find out for themselves, they'll most likely be ex-Christians. 

 

Srd44, thanks for being a scholar who wants to get truth out for truth's sake.  /salute